Talking Dateline: The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom

Summary

Dateline NBC: Talking Dateline - The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom

Host: Andrea Canning
Co-Host: Keith Morrison
Episode Title: The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom

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Introduction

In the compelling episode titled "The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom," Andrea Canning and renowned journalist Keith Morrison delve deep into one of America's most notorious true-crime cases—the 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Eric. This episode explores the enduring saga of the Menendez brothers, encompassing multiple trials, intense media scrutiny, and the ongoing debate over their potential release after decades behind bars.

Overview of the Menendez Case

The Menendez brothers, Lyle and Eric, brutally murdered their wealthy parents in their Beverly Hills home in 1989. Their actions sparked a nationwide media frenzy and ignited intense public debate regarding their motives and the potential factors influencing their heinous act.

Andrea Canning (01:15):
"This story is one that has captured headlines. It's about the 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Eric. The couple was found shot to death in their Beverly Hills home and what followed were multiple trials, a media frenzy, and now a possible chance at redemption."

Possible Motives: Abuse and Financial Gain

A central theme of the Menendez brothers' defense has been allegations of sexual abuse by their father, Jose Menendez. While the brothers consistently claimed abuse as a motive for their murders, the prosecution vehemently denied these allegations.

Keith Morrison (03:00):
"Sexual abuse is at the heart of it. Did it occur? I suspect it probably did, but there are people who are convinced that it didn't occur. And certainly the brothers did a lot of lying about it too, which didn't help their cause."

Andrea Canning (04:02):
"The prosecutor, she was very adamant, blunt about, you know, they were not. She does not believe that they were sexually abused."

Keith Morrison (04:11):
"Pam, the prosecutor, she is angry because she believes that they made up these allegations of abuse, that they have leaned on them for many years. Therefore, a belittled real abuse, which occurs far too often, her main job before getting into homicide prosecutions was sexual abuse. And so she knows what sexual abuse is all about."

The Brutality of the Crime

The murder of the Menendez parents was not only shocking due to the nature of the act but also because of the calculated manner in which it was executed. The brothers deliberated their decision to kill both parents over the course of a week, showcasing a disturbing level of premeditation.

Keith Morrison (05:02):
"They discussed whether or not to kill their parents. For up to about a week. They committed the crime and decided they would do that. They would certainly kill their father. But then for the couple of days before the murder, they discussed whether to kill their mother too."

Andrea Canning (05:51):
"So much anger there to be able to do that."

Keith Morrison (05:54):
"Nothing much made sense in this. The reason they had Jerry Ozil the psychiatrist was because they had burglarized some homes in the neighborhood that they lived in before. Their punishment was to see this therapist for a period of time afterwards. For months after the murders, they had sessions with him. They never, ever said anything about abuse."

Aftermath and Spending Spree

Following the murders, the Menendez brothers indulged in a lavish spending spree, staying at high-end establishments like the Bel Air Hotel and using expensive limousines. This behavior further fueled public suspicion and skepticism about their claimed motives.

Andrea Canning (06:24):
"They really liked expensive things even before the murder."

Keith Morrison (06:27):
"But they went on quite a wild spending spree afterwards. The thing that interested me about that was not so much the spending spree..."

Impact of the O.J. Simpson Trial

The timing of the Menendez trials coincided with the high-profile O.J. Simpson case, which had a significant influence on the legal environment and public perception. The DA's office, reeling from the Simpson verdict, faced immense pressure to secure a conviction in another sensational case.

Andrea Canning (15:10):
"I was thinking very early on, I was thinking the timing of this with OJ and, you know, hugely important when the second trial would take place. It was on the heels of OJ."

Keith Morrison (15:11):
"They felt they'd lost such an obvious slam dunk sort of case. It was an earthquake in the DA's office and they had to do something about it. The other case that was sitting right there waiting to be retried was another famous case that everybody was talking about, the Menendez case."

Legal Proceedings and Self-Defense Claims

In their defense, the Menendez brothers argued "imperfect self-defense," claiming they were in imminent danger due to their father's abuse. However, the California Supreme Court ruled against this defense, scrutinizing the evidence and denying the possibility of redemption based on their claims.

Keith Morrison (16:42):
"They couldn't use it because the Supreme Court looked at the evidence and said that there wasn't any imminent danger, so they couldn't use that as a defense."

Current Debate: Chance at Freedom

After serving over three decades in prison, the Menendez brothers now face a critical juncture regarding their potential release. DA George Gascon, who believed the time had come for their freedom, was voted out in the latest election, leaving their fate uncertain under the new district attorney.

Keith Morrison (18:09):
"People all around the world are talking about Menendez and how they should be released. George Gascon believed sincerely that the time had come when they should be. They have been, by all accounts, remarkably exemplary prisoners."

Andrea Canning (18:52):
"Whatever side you're on, you've served 35 years. If they are let out, it's not like they got some easy gig."

Keith Morrison (20:01):
"They've served a longer sentence in prison than people in most other industrialized countries like ours would serve and be allowed a chance at freedom."

Listener Reactions and Comparisons

The episode also features listener comments, highlighting diverse perspectives on the case. Some compare the Menendez brothers to other high-profile cases, such as Gypsy Blanchard, emphasizing differences in public sympathy and legal outcomes over time.

Listener Comment - Haley Deanna (21:32):
"This episode has everything. Menudo, OJ Simpson, Cheesecake Factory, beauty pageants, Kardashians and so much more."

Keith Morrison (23:24):
"This case is one that really is kind of hard to define because there are cases where people have been abused. I firmly believe that they probably were abused and they probably could have had if the circumstances of the actual killing were a little different."

Excerpts from Therapy Sessions

A pivotal moment in the episode is the inclusion of clips from Lyle Menendez's therapy sessions with Dr. Jerry Ozil. These sessions reveal graphic confessions about the murders, offering a rare and intimate glimpse into the brothers' psyche.

Lyle Menendez (13:45):
"My mother said, I thought that we had to come. Like I was saying before, we had to make a decision, it was one of the harder ones."

Keith Morrison (13:36):
"But they confessed to what they had done and were pretty open and direct about it. That's where I got the business about going back out to the car and reloading."

Conclusion

"The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom" offers an in-depth exploration of a case that continues to fascinate and divide public opinion. Through thorough analysis, expert interviews, and listener insights, Andrea Canning and Keith Morrison present a nuanced narrative that examines the complexities of justice, the impact of alleged abuse, and the evolving standards of legal redemption.

Andrea Canning (24:46):
"This is a wait and see. And I'm sure you'll update your story whenever we find out what the decision is."

Keith Morrison (24:51):
"You can be sure the debate in the district attorney's office is intense and it's ongoing."

This episode serves as a poignant reminder of the enduring questions surrounding true-crime cases and the elusive nature of redemption within the criminal justice system.

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For those interested in exploring this story further, the episode is available for streaming on Peacock or as part of the podcast list on your preferred platform.

Transcript

[Keith Morrison]

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[Andrea Canning]

Hi everyone, this is Andrea Canning and I'm here with Keith Morrison and we are talking dateline.

[Keith Morrison]

Hello, Andrea.

[Andrea Canning]

Good to see you and hear your voice. This episode is called the Menendez Brothers Chance at Freedom. This story is one that has captured headlines. It's about the 1989 murders of Kitty and Jose Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Eric. The couple was found shot to death in their Beverly Hills home and what followed were multiple trials, a media frenzy, and now a possible chance at redemption. If you haven't listened to the show yet, it's the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts you just chose from. So go there, listen to it, or if you want to watch it, you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. When you come back, Heath has an extra clip he's going to play for us. It's Lyle Menendez confessing to his therapist. Later, we are going to answer some of your questions about the show from social media. So stay tuned for that. Okay, let's do it. Let's talk Dateline. All right, first of all, Keith, I want you to listen to the sound. Do you hear that?

[Keith Morrison]

I hear it, yes.

[Andrea Canning]

It's a lot of pages. You know why? Because I've never taken so many notes while watching a Dateline in my life.

[Keith Morrison]

Those are your notes?

[Andrea Canning]

Those are all my notes that I. These are all questions I have for you.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, this is a long running story. It's full of very strange things. So it's understandable.

[Andrea Canning]

It really is. And I'm embarrassed to say this, as a mother, I found out after the fact that my 15 year old and my 14 year old had watched the Ryan Murphy monsters, I not sure I would have let them watch it. Didn't realize that they found it on Netflix.

[Keith Morrison]

Did they form an opinion based on watching it?

[Andrea Canning]

Oh, it's amazing. All these teens are talking about it and they absolutely think that the brothers need to get out based on watching this drama. It certainly got me interested in it, knowing that my kids had watched it. And then I watched your episode and I see why everyone is talking about it. It's incredible all these years later, all the interest in the case.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah, yeah. I've never seen anything like it and never could have imagined that this would develop beginning way back in 1989. I mean, I first covered this story for Nightly News when it. When the murders happened and then later on when the trials happened. And they became a media circus at the time too, in a different way because they didn't have social media in those days. It was always a big story, but it was always based on a varied series of beliefs that people would have observing these guys about the kinds of things that cannot be proved one way or the other. And, you know, sexual abuse is at the heart of it. Did it occur? I suspect it probably did, but there are people who are convinced that it didn't occur. And certainly the brothers did a lot of lying about it too, which didn't help their cause.

[Andrea Canning]

Like the prosecutor, she was very adamant, blunt about, you know, they were not. She does not believe that they were sexually abused.

[Keith Morrison]

Pam, the prosecutor, she is angry because she believes that they made up these allegations of abuse, that they have dined out on them for many years. Therefore, in a belittled real abuse, which occurs far too often, her main job before getting into homicide prosecutions was sexual abuse. And so she knows what sexual abuse is all about. She encountered many cases of it and believes in it wholeheartedly. But she believes that these two guys were not sexually abused. And it was an extremely brutal crime. There were some elements of it which I think made it very difficult for people to see that there should be some kind of redemption, as you say, at the end of it.

[Andrea Canning]

It was really awful. The fact that they reloaded, you know, the fact that they shot kids.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, not just reload it. Let me just tell it this way. First of all, they discussed whether or not to kill their parents. For up to about a week. They committed the crime and decided they would do that. They would certainly kill their father. But then for the couple of days before the murder, they discussed whether to kill their mother too. They decided to make that choice and Kill both parents. And Lyle. Lyle, their mother was still alive. She was crawling across the floor, crying and begging for help. And he had run out of ammunition. So he left the house. He walked out to their rental car. He opened the trunk. He got out the ammunition. He loaded his Mossberg shotgun. He walked back into the house. He walked right up to his mother. He put the gun to the side of her face and blew her face off.

[Andrea Canning]

So much anger there to be able to do that.

[Keith Morrison]

The nature of the crime suggests that there was certainly something going on. And, you know, the tendency is to want to believe people when they say things like that.

[Andrea Canning]

Of course. Do you think there's some version, Keith, of that? Yes, they were, you know, we don't know, of course. But, yes, maybe they were abused. But then also they liked the finer things in life. So maybe there was, like, a combination, the spending the money, you know, a byproduct of getting rid of the abusive father. It seems like they really liked expensive things for.

[Keith Morrison]

They sure did. Yeah.

[Andrea Canning]

Even before the murder.

[Keith Morrison]

Mm. But they went on quite a wild spending spree afterwards. The thing that interested me about that was not so much the spending spree. They were young, they were immature. They, you know, night of the night before the funeral, they stayed at the Bel Air Hotel, one of the most expensive hotels in la.

[Andrea Canning]

Oh, no. And took a limo.

[Keith Morrison]

So their father had threatened to remove them from the will, or so that. So their story went. And the day after the murder, they tried to get into the safety deposit box where the will was to see whether or not he carried out that threat. And that explains some of the timing of the murders that supposedly they were gonna be removed. Like he was gonna take that action within the next few days.

[Andrea Canning]

But he didn't do it.

[Keith Morrison]

But he didn't do it.

[Andrea Canning]

My goodness. I know. It's one of those stories where, you know, one minute you're thinking you feel bad for them, and then the next minute you're like, wait a second. It really takes you on a kind of a rollercoaster of trying to get to the bottom of what really was going through their minds. And it's tough to figure that out.

[Keith Morrison]

Mm. It is.

[Andrea Canning]

This reminded me so much of a case that you and I talked about on Dateline, True Crime Weekly, about the Olympian's wife in California who said that she was being abused by her husband. But he was, you know, the Olympian. Everyone loved him. And you said on the podcast that you felt like if that case was tried today, that it would probably have a different outcome. You know that we knew we didn't know as much about abuse back then. People didn't talk about it, but that was her defense, was that she was being abused. So she killed her husband. I wonder from you, where do you think this would go if this all happened right now, this crime?

[Keith Morrison]

It's truly hard to know for several reasons. One is that people are finding it easier now to say publicly that they've been abused and to kind of reveal all the details of that than they were in those days. So those are really hard questions. And the law hasn't kind of figured out exactly how to navigate them effectively twice.

[Andrea Canning]

Yep. Yep. When we come back, we have an extra clip from the confession of Lyle Menendez to his therapist, Dr. Jerry Ozil.

[Keith Morrison]

Hey, guys, Willie Geist here reminding you to check out the Sunday Sit down podcast. On this week's episode, I get together with Emmy, Grammy and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo to talk about her experience playing Elphaba opposite Ariana Grande's Glinda in the highly anticipated Hollywood adaptation of the Broadway classic Wicked. You can get our conversation now for free wherever you download your podcasts. I'm Keith Morrison. This story is about the end of the world, a frostbitten pet cemetery and zombies. This is a story about but a woman linked forever to the awful things that happened to her children. Well, it has to be heard to be believed. Think you know every DATELINE story? Think again. Listen to Mommy Doomsday and a dozen other riveting series when you follow the DATELINE Originals podcast. Out of nowhere, there it was. Sudden, shocking, terrifying.

[Andrea Canning]

I have never in my life felt fear like that.

[Keith Morrison]

Was this someone's idea of a sick prank or was it a horror movie come horribly alive?

[Andrea Canning]

I'm thinking he killed him and he had filmed the murder.

[Keith Morrison]

I'm Keith Morrison and this is dateline's newest podcast, the man in the Black Mask. All episodes are available now. To listen ad free, subscribe to DATELINE Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Dateline premium.com.

[Andrea Canning]

I felt like in the Lyle interview that you really pressed him. You know, this, this was a hard hitting interview, in my opinion. You were really trying to like drill down. There was, there were, there were no free passes in that interview.

[Keith Morrison]

No. But he did well, didn't you think?

[Andrea Canning]

I do. I do.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah.

[Andrea Canning]

I think he's been in there for 35 years, as you said. He has a lot to say and I was glad to see that he did the interview with you.

[Keith Morrison]

When I talked to Lyle, we went on for quite a long Time as we do with Dateline interviews. But I found him to be a very engaging, very interesting, effective, intelligent person to interview. He presented a lot of the facts of the case the way a politician would, you know, just kind of presenting his side of things, which made sense. But I came away from that thinking, you know, I kind of respect that guy. He's pretty. He's pretty good at what he does.

[Andrea Canning]

Have they ever apologized for what they did? Since they've admitted obviously, what they did? Have they ever, you know, said maybe.

[Keith Morrison]

You know, if they could go back in time and not do it, they would, of course, do that. But apologize to whom? You know.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah, I know. Or just to show some remorse that we chose the wrong option.

[Keith Morrison]

I think that they. Yeah, they've both said they understand they made a very bad decision. They did a terrible thing. But remorse, I don't know. It's a hard to think. Hard thing to figure out how much remorse people actually feel.

[Andrea Canning]

Keith, you have an extra clip you want to tell us about.

[Keith Morrison]

These were sessions with Dr. Jerry Ozil that the brothers were assigned to see. This particular doctor. The background of the story and the reason that we're able to hear this is because although, you know, any conversation with a psychiatrist is completely off limits to everybody else, they're not going to tell a single soul in the world about it. Except Dr. Ozil was hearing these confessions from the boys, and he knew what they were accused of. And here were these kids revealing in graphic detail what they had done to their parents. And so he invited his girlfriend to go and sit in the waiting room and listen at the door. But when the tapes were played, it offered a whole new window into what really happened in that case. And this is a portion, that of that interview of LYLE Talking with Dr. Jerry Ozil. And that's how my mother say, I thought that we had to come. Like I was saying before, we had to make a decision, it was one of the harder ones. And it was a separate issue. Hey, these are the reason my father should be filled with no question what he's doing is impossible with myself and for myself, based on what he's doing. My mother. Yeah. Solution is to kill your mother.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

[Keith Morrison]

Nothing much made sense in this. Nothing much made sense. The reason they had Jerry Ozil the psychiatrist was because they had burglarized some homes in the neighborhood that they lived in before. Their punishment was to see this therapist for a period of time afterwards. For months after the murders, they had sessions with Him. They never, ever said anything about abuse.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah.

[Keith Morrison]

But they confessed to what they had done. And they were pretty open and direct about. That's where I got the business about going back out to the car and reloading.

[Andrea Canning]

If they're not talking about the abuse in these sessions before, you know, the trial, did they give a reason for why they killed the parents since they weren't fessing up about the abuse yet?

[Keith Morrison]

Well, they were angry. Their father was a. They felt a brutal man. He was not nice to them. They didn't like him, and they made, he made huge demands of them. And that's about as far as it went. Were they just not talking about it because they were ashamed at that point with their own psychiatrist? That's possibly the case. I don't, I honestly don't know. I don't know what to think.

[Andrea Canning]

What struck me in this episode too were just the details, the level of the fine details that you and your producer, who was your producer, there have.

[Keith Morrison]

Been several over the years.

[Andrea Canning]

Several.

[Keith Morrison]

The current one is Susan Liebowitz, who is.

[Andrea Canning]

Okay, Susan. I love Susan. Yeah. I mean, just the details that you packed in that. For someone like me who doesn't know the story that well, just hearing things like they traded their suits for their sweaters for court and.

[Keith Morrison]

Oh, yes, that was a very big, that was a very big deal at the time. And everybody kind of knew what they were doing. But it nevertheless did present a much different image on a day to day basis for the jury.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah. And we talked a little bit about the limo, showing up in the limo and staying at the Hotel Bel Air and details of the house itself. Famous people had lived in that house. And was it Prince?

[Keith Morrison]

Prince lived there.

[Andrea Canning]

Lived there. And another little detail that was in there that turned into a bigger detail, I'm thinking as I start watching it, I was thinking very early on, I'm like, I wonder the timing of this with OJ and, you know, hugely important when the second trial would take place. It was on the heels of oj. And so it mattered because the prosecutors needed this win with the Menendez brothers. Right. Because they had just lost the OJ case.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, exactly. And I covered the OJKs too, at the very end. And so both of these things going on at the same time. You cannot overstate the amount of upset there was in the whole legal system in LA when OJ was acquitted. They felt they'd lost such an obvious slam dunk sort of case. It was an earthquake in the DA's office and they had to do something about it from every level, from the governor on down, was demanding that they get a little sharper about what they did. And the other case that was sitting right there waiting to be retried was another famous case that everybody was talking about, the Menendez case. So that's why things changed a bit. I think that the biggest change was that the California Supreme Court made a ruling about what the important issue was. And that was the boys had claimed imperfect self defense, which was the thought that they would be. They were in imminent danger and they.

[Andrea Canning]

Couldn'T use that anymore. Right.

[Keith Morrison]

They couldn't use it because in the second one, the Supreme Court looked at the evidence of that and said that, you know, there wasn't any imminent danger, so they couldn't use that as a defense. It was just a point of law that the prosecutor kept making.

[Andrea Canning]

One of the things that shocked me was when the prosecutor said that she had armed herself because she was fearing for her safety from all of this, and she armed herself with the same type of gun the brothers used in the murders. What's going on with that?

[Keith Morrison]

Well, she has an in your face mentality, right. I'm going to get a Mossberg shotgun just like they did. And she's still angry about this case, you know, because it's easy to use. Because if they could figure it out, I can figure it out, you know, these stupid boys. But also, I mean, the serious side of it is that she, because she prosecuted the case and continues to insist that no abuse occurred, in her opinion. She has received a tremendous amount of hate mail threats. The same is true of Allen Abrahamson, the reporter we talked to. Tremendous amount of abuse has been poured on that guy just for restating the facts of the case and offering the opinion that he thought the jury made the right decision.

[Andrea Canning]

This is our world now. This is social media. This is how people, you know, people hiding behind their phones and their computers, they just, they say ugly things, right? And it's a little scary sometimes.

[Keith Morrison]

It is. And that doesn't do any good at all. You know, people all around the world are talking about Menendez and how they should be released. I mean, this is a perfectly legitimate debate whether or not they should be released from prison. George Gascon believed sincerely that the time had come when they should be. They have been, by all accounts, remarkably exemplary prisoners. And they have helped their fellow prisoners. They have taught them. They have not just beautified the prison yard, but they have been, they've been extremely good people while in prison. They've gotten married, so they've they've lived as well as you can live in a prison cell. And a lot of people think they should be living on the outside now.

[Andrea Canning]

Well, it was sort of what I was thinking was whichever side you're on of this, you think they should be let out. You don't think they should be let out. They have served 35 years. So if they are let out, it's not like they got some easy gig, right, where they barely got any time or they got some sweetheart deal. That's not the case here. And I'm not trying to take away from the crime here at all, obviously, but are they a danger to society? You know, the answer, my gut tell me, is no. Right. So, I mean, you kind of have to look at it that way.

[Keith Morrison]

They've served a longer sentence in prison than people in most other industrialized countries like ours would serve and be allowed a chance at freedom. In Canada, for example, as you know, a life sentence is 25 years, and then you have a chance at parole. They've been in prison 35 years. And there's a third element, too, which was, and this was probably one of the important deciding elements for the da, George Gascon, to make the decision he did was that they were young men who do not have fully formed intellectual capacities.

[Andrea Canning]

I agree with that.

[Keith Morrison]

They grow up a lot in their 20s. And so that's one of the considerations for thinking, okay, they probably deserve a chance at life now. But at the same time, you have to say that there are lots of people in prison for life without the possibility of parole who committed crimes which were far less severe than that and who have behaved themselves in an exemplary way in prison. They don't have armies of people trying to get them released.

[Andrea Canning]

Just incredible, the timing with George Gascoigne. And you know that this election's happening and he gives them this Hail Mary right before. And our viewers, our listeners will know that George Gascon was voted out in this latest election, but he slipped this in right before the election.

[Keith Morrison]

He's a charming fellow. I interviewed him, too, at great length. And he certainly believes wholeheartedly in what he's doing. And that kind of philosophy actually reduces crime. But he could have made a decision about the Menendez brothers much sooner than he did. So the new district attorney hasn't said too much beyond the fact that he will have to reexamine all the evidence. He wants to talk to everybody before he makes a recommendation.

[Andrea Canning]

Yes. Yeah. After the break, we'll be back to answer some of your questions from social media. Now for one of the best parts of Talking Dateline.

[Keith Morrison]

Oh, boy.

[Andrea Canning]

When we get to hear from our listeners and our viewers. And I have to say, just skimming through some of the comments, they had a lot of the same observations that we did in our conversation.

[Keith Morrison]

The opinion is all over the map on this one. But there's a lot of opinion.

[Andrea Canning]

Yes, absolutely. This one is from Haley Deanna 173. This episode has everything. Menudo, OJ Simpson, Cheesecake Factory, beauty pageants, Kardashians and so much more. And you know, we can add in there Milli Vanilli, we can add in Batman movie, we can add in Prince, even got a mention.

[Keith Morrison]

Yeah, that's true. And it really described a lot that was America in that period of time. You know, at least it was well healed America in that field of time.

[Andrea Canning]

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so this one is from Joan Gvs, and she is comparing this to Gypsy Blanchard, who made quite the splash with her release on social media. She writes, Gypsy Blanchard was an abuse victim who killed her mother. She went to prison, served 10 years, and is now free. That's the difference in being an abuse victim then and now. They've served their time. They've suffered enough.

[Keith Morrison]

Well, I agree with her. There are lots of cases where people have done lot less time. The the one that always comes to my mind because I did the story and I was so moved by it, was Mary Winkler, whose husband was a terrible abuser, who shot him in the back three times with a shotgun and then took off with the kids for the beach. And they charged her with first degree murder. But her defense was so revealing that she wound up serving very little time at all. She was convicted of manslaughter, but I think she did maybe less than a year. So these things do happen.

[Andrea Canning]

And realtor Kim, 15, it seems to me she thinks they should stay in prison. She says stay in prison. She says, not saying they were not abused, but they were not in danger at that moment. They were 18 and 21. Right. Why didn't they move out?

[Keith Morrison]

This case is one that really is kind of hard to define because there are cases where people have been abused. And I firmly believe they probably were abused and they probably could have had if the circumstances of the actual killing were a little different. More of a motive of diminished responsibility because of that, more of a defense of that, rather. But the details are just complicated with the planning, et cetera. I'm very curious about a lot of things still in this story, and they're really side issues. The central legal one will be addressed by the da the question of whether they should be allowed out of prison. Yeah, well, but some things like this letter which has been put forward as evidence, some other things which have been put forward as evidence, and they, you look at them very carefully and is it really evidence or not? And is the letter real or is it, you know, has it been manufactured? So both the prosecution side and the people who prosecuted the case all those years ago are now looking at that letter, looking at other evidence to see whether it's actual evidence or just something thrown at the fan to see if it'll stick.

[Andrea Canning]

Well, this is a tough one and it's going to be tough for the next prosecutor who's coming in since Gascon is on his way out. That definitely, definitely threw a big curveball in this story that already has so many twists and turns. So it's a wait and see. And I'm sure you'll update your story whenever we find out what the decision is.

[Keith Morrison]

You can be sure the debate in the district attorney's office is intense and it's ongoing.

[Andrea Canning]

So, Keith, thank you for answering all these questions. So much appreciated. Really good episode.

[Keith Morrison]

Thanks. You take care.

[Andrea Canning]

That is our talking date line for this week. Thanks so much, Keith. And thanks everyone for listening to us. Remember, if you have any questions about our stories or any cases you think we should cover, reach out to us on Social at Dateline NBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. Also, remember to listen to Keith's all new podcast, the man in the Black Mask. All episodes are available to listen to now wherever you get your podcasts.